The design competition proposed for DCOSS 2008, develops around a
simulated rescue mission. We propose an ad-hoc communications problem
among mobile autonomous agents that need to find, as fast as possible, a
specific spot in a maze (target) and bring the whole team there.
Each participating team is composed by 5 independent, but desirably
cooperating, robotic agents. The robots can communicate with each other using an
emulated ad-hoc wireless communication protocol with realistic
parameters:
limited bandwidth, limited range and a random non-zero latency and error
probability.
Beyond the communication capabilities, each robot has its own set of
sensors (obstacle, GPS, compass, beacon, collision, hear and ground) and
actuators (motors, communication and leds)
The robotic team forms a distributed system.
The major competition
challenge is thus to develop efficient cooperation strategies capable of
minimizing the time required to find the target area and bring all the
robots there, considering constrained communication resources and
sensors.
Related competitions:
CiberMouse@RTSS2007
CiberMouse@RTSS2006
Ciber-Rato @ Universidade
de Aveiro
CiberMouse@DCOSS2008 Canceled 
